Haarlem Oost is a branch library in the Netherlands that wanted to encourage visitors to add tags […] to the books they read. […] To do this, the library didn’t create a complicated computer system or send people online. Instead, they installed more book drops and return shelves, labeled with different descriptors like “boring,” “great for kids,” “funny,” etc.

Is that great or what? Physical tagging! It feels like the informational equivalent of turning a dance floor into a piezoelectric power generator. But alas—the library has now abandoned the system. Why?

[…] people were using the system so seriously that it took them a lot of time per book to decide where to place it. That caused some logistic problems in the (small) building, especially as they have some peak times.

It’s clear to me that this is a totally beautiful, clever mechanism—it makes me want to use the too-snooty term of art “intervention”—that just needed a little extra engineering. There’s a great comment thread over at Nina’s blog that dives in even deeper.

So, this made me realize that we’ve been doing this for years with garbage and recycling. Some cities have revamped their tagging system several times (Toronto had blue bins and garbage, then blue bins, black bins and garbage, then blue, black, green and garbage and now blue, green and garbage).

There’s a mixture of crowd sourcing and then expert curation (the experts are poorly paid workers at facilities sorting through our coarsely sorted garbage).